The aftermath of the "Shannon diplomatic incident," in which Yeltsin, having slept through a meeting with Irish leaders while his plane sat on the tarmac at the Shannon Airport, confronts Russian reporters back at Vnukovo-2 in Moscow.

Just five months before his death, Nobel Peace Prize-winning physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov (1921-1989) spoke out at the USSR’s First Congress of People’s Deputies, defying Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022) to advocate for a multi-party system in a speech broadcast live to millions—yet silenced within the Congress hall itself.

Documentation of the 17 March 1991 referendum in which Soviet voters weighed in on whether it was “essential” to “preserve the USSR” as a federation of “equal sovereign republics.” 80% of the eligible population participated, with 77.8% of that number voting YES. 

Published in the 13 March 1988 issue of the daily newspaper “Sovetskaia Rossiia” (Soviet Russia), this letter by chemistry lecturer and Stalinist apologist Nina Andreeva (1938-2020) sparked tens of thousands of public responses, revealing that conservative currents in the Communist Party and beyond now faced strong resistance from a glasnost-empowered public.

Coverage of Soviet tanks rolling into the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius in January 1991 from Pravda, the Russian Communist Party’s press organ since 1911.